Andy Kindler: Saturday Night Shins ‘n Giggles

Saturday’s late show, the final of his four-show standup engagement at Toronto’s Comedy Bar, brought out a packed house of troublemakers. Oh, things got wild.

If you know Kindler’s style, you know that it may seem to lack a specific direction at times. Now, most people watch that and enjoy the entertainment value in the vocalization of Kindler’s inner monologue.

Others? Others may interpret a non-sequitor as a cry for help. One man called out, seemingly proud of his helpfulness, “politics! American politics are pretty hot right now”.

Kindler was amused enough by the guy’s nerve to name-drop satirist Will Durst and offer a few Ron Paul observations. Though as you’d expect, he spent most of the next few minutes gently but relentlessly ripping on the guy enough to ensure that he wouldn’t offer up any more premises.

About halfway through the show, there was what could best be described as a “ruckus” near the middle of the room, and a few patrons exited out to the bar. Kindler stopped to address it, unsucessfully pumping the eyewitnesses for the juicy details.

Comedy Bar tends to attract a very well-behaved, comedy-savvy audience. A simple well-meaning shout-out is unusual enough, so it’s actually pretty exciting when something more passionate goes down. There was enough post-show play-by-play around the bar that we think we pieced together what happened: Comedy Bar’s seating is rows of folding chairs, which have a gap in the seatback just big enough for the person behind you to accidentally kick you in your upper crack region. Usually not a problem, but more of a problem when a woman repeatedly does it to the guy in front of her. And then refuses to stop when he asks her to, and does it on purpose. The apparent solution, in this case, was for the guy to lift up his chair and slam it back into her shins. The duo had the good sense to take it outside on their own accord. We hear they made up.

Scandalous, right? What can you say: we’re Canadian.

Coming up tomorrow: Recapping Kindler’s return as host of the weekly sketch show Sunday Night Live.

About the Author

Sharilyn Johnson is the author of the book Bears & Balls: The Colbert Report A-Z. Called "one of the city’s most discriminating comedy critics” by NOW Magazine, Sharilyn has been covering comedy for longer than she cares to admit. She served as the comedy reporter for Winnipeg's Uptown Magazine for five years, and was the host of the radio show Laugh Tracks for three seasons. Her work has also appeared in the Toronto Star, the Winnipeg Free Press, The Apiary, and on CBC Radio's national comedy programs LOL and Definitely Not the Opera.